


(My Heart Told My Head) This Time No

by dogeared



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Domestic, First Time, Gratuitous shirtless chopping of wood, M/M, Post 3a
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-02 03:04:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogeared/pseuds/dogeared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post and beam, spruce and pine; a little house in the woods; a new start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(My Heart Told My Head) This Time No

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lovelivesinthedream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelivesinthedream/gifts).



> Lovelivesinthedream, I started with your prompt about Derek being a secret romantic and ended up here. I hope you enjoy! <3
> 
> Thank you to C for beta!

In the end, Derek came back to Beacon Hills.

When he left town with Cora, everything felt broken so far beyond repair that he couldn't fathom staying. He wasn't sure where they'd go or what they were going to do, but he imagined that maybe they'd be able to make a fresh start, like he and Laura had tried to do, find someplace new to belong and build a life. But Cora didn't want to settle down—she wanted to travel and meet new people and taste new things and jump off of cliffs, literally and metaphorically. Derek just felt weary and heartsore, tired in his bones. So they made it work for a little while, drove and camped, ran in the woods and slept under the stars and drank a lot of bad coffee and listened to a lot of bad music on the radio, when they could get a station to come in at all. And then Derek let go of her, told her that he'd come for her if she needed him, anytime, anywhere, and he trusted as well as he could that it didn't mean he was losing her again.

She went off to have her adventures, and Derek thought about more days on the road. He thought about small towns and big cities and all the places he could be anonymous and alone and safe, and he thought about _home_ and what it used to mean and what he wanted it to mean now, and he found himself standing in the woods of Beacon Hills Preserve, shafts of late-afternoon sunlight beaming down through the canopy and making shifting patterns of light and dark on the ground, wondering what it would take to build a house here.

Derek's first stop, after stretching his legs in the woods, shaking off the stale smell of being in the car, was to find Scott, just long enough to tell him he was back in town and had no intention of being involved in their lives anymore, and he wasn't offended at all when Scott wished him good luck and looked nothing but relieved. His second stop was the Sheriff's station. Derek told Sheriff Stilinski the same thing, and he was clearly just as relieved as Scott had been, but he also invited Derek to sit down.

"You're uncle's gone to ground," the Sheriff told him. "My son and I have a new policy of sharing everything, or at least everything involving—" He waved his hand in the air, and Derek took the gesture to mean _werewolves_ , or _weird shit_. "Since he told me about Peter, we've been keeping an eye on him, but suddenly he's just disappeared. Do you know anything about where he might be?" Derek shook his head, and it was his turn to feel relieved, because whatever home he was trying to make here, he didn't want Peter to have any claim to it. "No, sir," Derek said. "And if he's gone, I'm glad."

It must have been the right answer, as far as the Sheriff was concerned—and if he couldn't tell you were lying by listening to your heart, Derek was willing to bet he could tell you were bullshitting by looking at your face. He nodded at Derek, tilted his mouth into a smile that looked tired but genuine. "In that case, glad to have you back, son. Let me know if you need anything."

Derek stood up, shook the Sheriff's hand and moved to leave, but he paused with his hand on the doorknob. "My family used to own land, east of the Preserve. The property the house was on, but more than that, too. I think a lot more. I'd like to build there, if I can."

It turned out there was still land that was part of the Hale Trust, and it was amazing just how fast you could fast-track building permits when you had the county Sheriff vouching for you.

The guy he talked to on the phone about the kit house estimated it'd take two people about two weeks to build it, no heavy equipment necessary, and Derek figured that translated to maybe about a month, give or take, for one werewolf who knew, more or less, what he was doing.

Derek hadn't thought about it for a long, long time, but the summer he was thirteen, he'd helped his dad tear down and rebuild their front porch. He'd learned how to read a plan and use a saw and a plane, learned how much it hurt to have a splinter jam up under his thumbnail, even if the pain only lasted a few seconds. He remembers loving how soft newly-sanded wood felt, and the smell of sawdust, and that it was something for just the two of them.

The things he didn't know about building a house, he asked about—mostly at the family-owned hardware store downtown, where they told him how to mix concrete for the foundation, how to chop and store wood. It was pretty much the only time he ever came into town at all except to stock up on food at the supermarket.

Derek didn't end up building the house alone, or at least not all of it. The Sheriff drove up with a couple of styrofoam cups of convenience store coffee on the day the kit was delivered, and after that, he had a knack for showing up just when it would be really helpful to have another set of hands. He claimed he wasn't all that handy, but he could hold a beam in place or swing a hammer just fine. They mostly worked quietly together, but sometimes Derek would find himself in the middle of a conversation without really knowing how it had started—about the sports teams Sheriff Stilinski followed, about the weather and the surf report, about Stiles, visiting colleges and thinking about where to apply.

True to his word, Derek had stayed away from Scott's pack, and none of them had come to him for help (or to accuse him of anything). It either showed how strong they were or how weak he was. In his better moments, Derek could start to see his way to believing that maybe not every bad thing that happened in Beacon Hills was his fault, but it was still easier to think about a quiet future out here.

The work went faster than Derek had expected, and he felt a deep, grounding sense of satisfaction, seeing it take shape. The Sheriff always seemed to know a guy—plumbing, insulation, electricity—and then it was finished: post and beam, spruce and pine; a little house in the woods; a new start.

* * *

Derek had been content enough sleeping out in the woods, occasionally retreating to the car for a night if it stormed—he'd gotten used to camping with Cora; their last night together, she'd inched over in her sleeping bag and used him as a pillow, and while she counted stars and talked about all of the places she was planning to go, he counted her heartbeats. But there's something to be said for sleeping in a real bed again, _his_ bed, with soft sheets and warm quilts and room to stretch out and a roof over his head that he built with his own two hands. It's been a week, and it hasn't gotten old yet, and he can't imagine getting tired of it anytime soon.

Derek's phone buzzes from somewhere under his pillow, and like he's summoned her up just by thinking about her, it's Cora. Derek had hoped they would keep in touch, but he hasn't heard anything from her until now—it turns out to be a text with instructions for how to set up an account on Instagram, and how to follow _her_ account. He's pretty sure he's going to need coffee for this, so he levers himself out of bed and pads to the kitchen. He puts on the kettle and grinds the beans, and while the coffee brews, he figures out how to do what she's telling him to do—and then the are pictures. Lots of pictures, a whole stream of them, food and mountains and sunrises and people laughing and dancing and wrapped around each other. He taps one with a finger, and it turns out to be a short video of Cora pointing to herself, then moving the camera so that he can see she's standing at the edge of a bluff, high above the water—she waves and grins at him from somewhere far away, and Derek looks at his phone and smiles helplessly back at her. 

His sister's happy. Derek's at least figured out how to live with himself, standing barefoot in his tiny kitchen, hoping it won't be another place he has to run away from—and then he hears the Sheriff's cruiser, and the Sheriff's knocking on his door, wearing his uniform and looking official.

Derek tries not to panic, but Sheriff Stilinski must see it on his face because he holds up a hand and says, "Sorry to barge in on you. I wanted to wait until you were settled in, but I could really use your help." So Derek finds another mug and pours him a cup of coffee, and they sit at the table in the kitchen, case files spread out between them, all sorts of "suspicious activity" that the Sheriff's Department hasn't been able to find an everyday human explanation for. Derek shares anything he knows that might be useful—memories from his childhood, lore from his family and other packs, ghost stories that Peter used to scare them with. He does wonder why the Sheriff doesn't just work with Stiles on this stuff. "Believe me," he says, "my son would love nothing more than to have his hands all over this, but I'd really rather he concentrated on his math homework."

Derek's not sure if what he knows is useful at all, but the Sheriff keeps coming back until it becomes a regular thing. He likes Derek's coffee, he says, so Derek brews it up dutifully, and if the Sheriff is often the only other person he sees in any given week, Derek finds that he doesn't mind it at all.

Of course, that's when Stiles shows up.

"I know you've been helping my dad," he says, taking up more space than Derek remembers as he stands in the doorway. "We're trying to be better about sharing things, not keeping secrets, since it's just the two of us—we're all we've got, you know?"

"Right, the family sharing plan," Derek says.

"Ha, ha. But see? You totally only know about that because you've been hanging out with my dad."

"And you knew that I was out here because he told you," Derek says.

"No, I knew you were out here because you announced your intentions or whatever to Scott when you came back to town," Stiles says. "And he said we should leave you alone, so we did. I knew that your house was finished because my dad told me."

Stiles has always left him a little tongue-tied. Derek can think of five, ten things he'd _like_ to say, starting with _can you please go away now_ , but instead he finds himself stepping aside and letting Stiles in.

Derek can see the same blue Jeep parked outside before he shuts the door, and when he turns around, Stiles has already dumped his backpack on the table and is stripping out of about four layers until he's left in just a t-shirt with a fat brown cartoon pony on it. He's talking the whole time, moving through Derek's space, saying, "Whew, it's warm in here—oh, sweet, you have a little, what is that, a wood stove? Is this, like, rustic-cozy chic?"

It is a wood stove, and Derek loves it unreservedly. He's chopped a pretty ridiculous amount of wood for it, stacked it neatly behind the house, and he falls asleep slumped in front of its warm orange glow almost every night, even though his bed's just across the room. Stiles is obviously drawn to it too, because he folds himself down onto the floor facing it and closes his eyes, a blissful smile on his face.

Derek feels a little dizzy. Maybe he does have the stove stoked up too high. After months of quiet, here's Stiles, different and the same, filling up every corner of Derek's space with his chatter, with his _scent_ , juniper and spice and beeswax underneath the deodorant and detergent. " _Stiles_ ," Derek finally says, feeling helpless. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I just wanted to say hi," Stiles says breezily, as if they're normal people and this is the kind of thing they do. "Maybe I missed you," he adds, and then he gets up. "And actually, I need to get home."

He re-layers and grabs his stuff and drives off, and Derek feels . . . he doesn't know how he feels, but he walks around the side of the house instead of back into it, strides off into the woods, and then he's running, and then he's pausing by a broad fir tree to strip down and leave his clothes in a pile at the base of the trunk, and then he's _shifting_ , because he can run fastest as a wolf. He runs, and he can feel strange energy sizzling along his nerve endings, underneath his skin, and it's stupid, really stupid, because it's not even dark yet and there could be people out here in the woods, but he runs anyway, runs and runs and flops down into a pile of leaves and rolls and rolls, hoping no one can see him, as if he can rub Stiles's scent right off of him. When he gets back to the house, it still smells like him, and Derek throws open all the windows.

It doesn't matter, though; somehow—because Derek didn't kick him out and tell him not to come back?—Stiles takes that first visit as his cue to keep showing up. He does homework, mostly, and he talks, ostensibly focused on highlighting every other sentence in his history textbook or filling up page after page of a notepad, but also filling Derek in on everything from Scott and the pack to school to his dad to whatever video games he's playing to their encounters with the supernatural.

When he catches Derek splitting more logs one day, he laughs delightedly—"You're like a mountain man cliché, it's so great"—and tells him not to stop on his account. So Derek works, head down, a little self-conscious that he'd pulled his shirt off, and Stiles is quiet for once, enough that Derek can hear it clearly when his heartbeat picks up. He looks up again, expecting Stiles to be watching him, but Stiles is staring at his own knees, picking at the fabric of his pants. He says, "The nemeton sucks. I don't even have the words to describe just how much it sucks, but the whole heart of darkness thing, that was apparently horrifyingly real."

Derek's palms go sweaty, enough that he puts down the ax because he's afraid he might drop it. Stiles looks up at him, pale and drawn, his eyes too bright, and Derek feels stuck in place. Stiles says, "It's okay, though. My dad helps a lot—it's part of why we do the sharing thing now." Derek can hear that it's both a lie and the truth. Stiles sucks in a deep breath, scrubs the back of his hand over his eyes and stands up. "Could you put your shirt on?" he asks. Derek does, and then Stiles is right there, hugging him; he's thin in Derek's arms, all bone and sinew and rabbit-fast heart. He hooks his chin over Derek's shoulder, mumbles, "I didn't want it to be weird," and they both hold on tight. 

Derek does his grocery shopping early in the morning, when the store's mostly empty and the cashiers are only half-awake. He's pretty sure Stiles is the only one who knows, which is why it's a little suspicious when he rounds a corner, headed for the frozen peas, and there's Isaac, standing in the aisle like he was waiting for Derek.

"Stiles told me you'd be here," he says. "I just wanted— I just wanted to see you, and tell you I'm doing okay. The pack's great, and Ms. McCall, she's just, she's really nice. She's not a very good cook, though, so Scott and I make dinner most of the time . . . " Isaac trails off, and Derek does the first thing he can think of—reaches out and wraps his hand around Isaac's shoulder. 

"You deserve good things, okay? You deserve them, and I'm really glad you have them now." Derek can feel the connection that's still between them, faint but there. He says, "Don't fuck up like I did," and Isaac grins, bright and sunny, looking the happiest Derek's ever seen him, and then he's gone, and Derek has to stand and stare at the frozen vegetables for a while, the store slowly coming to life around him, before he can move on.

"Don't be mad, okay?" Stiles says when Derek sees him later. 

"I'm not mad. Come on, I want to show you something." He walks Stiles behind the house, leads him through stands of trees, along nearly-invisible paths carpeted thickly with moss and pine needles. Erica and Boyd have headstones in the town cemetery, but Derek knows exactly where their bodies are buried, out here deep in the woods. Stiles notices the wolfsbane right away, and then he gets it, even before Derek has to explain that these are their graves, that he comes out here sometimes to be with them, to offer whatever penance he can. Instead Stiles swoops in and hugs Derek for the second time, squeezing hard enough that Derek can feel it right down to the muscle and tendon and bone. And if Derek goes home and curls up in his bed afterward, if he scrolls through Cora's latest photos and doesn't get up again until the next morning, no one has to know but him.

After that, Stiles starts leaving things behind, like proof that he's coming back—a superhero t-shirt, still damp from when he got caught in the rain (Derek had loaned him one of his own before he could think better of it); a pile of college brochures which, Derek discovers when he flips through them, are covered in tiny notes about things Stiles liked and didn't like, where his mom went, where he wants to go, if he gets in; battered paperbacks that Derek reads by the wood stove at night; a red hoodie, draped over one of the kitchen chairs and forgotten until Sheriff Stilinski shows up with more case files and raises an eyebrow at it. 

"My son bothering you?" he asks. Derek flushes hot and says, "Uh, no, sir. It's fine," and the Sheriff nods and doesn't say anything else about it.

Derek spends a lot more time running than he ever used to. Maybe he just doesn't have enough to do, but he feels keyed up all the time in a way that only settles once he's let his muscles work, found a rhythm with his breath, tuned his senses to the wildness around him, the trees and the wind and the changeable sky.

He's pleasantly worn out by the time he's done, which is maybe why he's not really prepared when he opens the door and takes in the mess in front of the wood stove—a stack of books and papers and a highlighter missing its cap; one haphazard sock and a sweatshirt, turned inside-out; a mug of coffee gone cold; Stiles sprawled on the floor in the middle of all of it, breathing deep and quiet, almost asleep—and his heart feels like it flips over, and he thinks, _this isn't what I wanted_.

"Hey," Stiles says, looking up. His voice is low and raspy, and there's a crease cutting across his cheek from where he'd pillowed it on his arm. "You're back." He looks so comfortable, so content and settled in, like be belongs here, and what exactly have they been doing these past few months? Derek thought— It doesn't matter what he thought, but getting involved, or whatever this is, that's not how he can live with himself. That's not how people stay safe. 

"Stiles, you have to go."

"What? How come?" If he didn't think Stiles would come after him, Derek would turn around right now and run until he couldn't anymore. 

"I just need you to go, okay?"

Whatever he sees on Derek's face, he doesn't ask any more questions. Maybe he's as good at reading people as his dad is. Once he's gone, Derek breathes in and out, in and out, in and out, and tries to tell himself that werewolves don't hyperventilate. It gets dark, and when Derek finally moves to turn on a light, it occurs to him that he didn't hear Stiles's Jeep drive off. And that, when the rush of blood in his own ears has quieted, he can still hear Stiles's heartbeat.

Which makes sense, since Stiles is huddled on the bumper of the Jeep, hands tucked in his armpits. 

"Stiles! What are you _doing_ out here?" 

"I could ask you the same question! No, wait, that doesn't make sense. I thought you were going to come after me, okay? Like, some grand romantic gesture or something, only then you didn't come out, and I realized that it was going to be awkward, because you'd hear me drive away, like, an hour later, or else you'd come out here in the morning and find me frozen. Or I'd knock on your door and it would be weird."

"Oh, _that_ would be weird. So you were just going to sit here and freeze?"

"It was a working plan, I was going to go with it and see what happened."

"Stiles, jesus, come on." Stiles shivers theatrically, and Derek chivvies him inside the house and over to the stove. He chafes his palms up and down Stiles's cold arms, pushes his fingers into Stiles's cold hair, lets Stiles sneak his icy hands under his shirt. Stiles says, "Thanks for not letting me freeze to death, or die of boredom," and Derek thinks about Stiles being gone, too, about not being able to keep him safe, and he leans closer until he can feel Stiles's cold lips, and he kisses him until they're warm.

"Is this okay"? Stiles gasps when Derek lets him come up for air. "Please let this be okay, I want you to be okay with this, with me. Are you?"

"Stiles, is this really what you want?" Derek asks. It seems impossible, unbelievable.

"What do _you_ want? Do you really want to be alone?" 

I don't want to get hurt, Derek thinks. I don't want you or anyone else to get hurt. 

"You make it better, all right?" Stiles says, moving even closer into Derek's space, sounding vehement and sure. "Things can get really bad, really crazy and hard and terrifying, and being here with you makes it better. And I _know_ you. And if you can't trust yourself yet, then maybe trust me, okay?"

Everything else Derek has done since he's been back has been cautious. Careful. And doing this with Stiles feels like the worst kind of recklessness. He takes in the flush spreading across Stiles's cheeks, rubs his thumb against Stiles's jaw, feels the pulse fluttering in Stiles's throat, lays his hand over Stiles's heart. "It's okay," Stiles says, and Derek chooses to believe him.

He peels off Stiles's layers, one by one, and when he gets down to the last one, he recognizes his own gray t-shirt, the one Stiles borrowed weeks and weeks ago. Derek leans down and presses his nose to Stiles's collarbone, breathes in the warm, familiar smell of him. Stiles isn't as cold anymore, and he's not patient at all—Derek feels Stiles's fingers carding through his hair, scratching against his scalp, tugging until Derek lifts his head and kisses him again. "Mmmmmmmm," Stiles says, and Derek hears a hurt noise come out of his own throat. Stiles holds him gently in place, kisses him so gently, again and again, then presses his teeth into Derek's jaw until Derek shivers and sways into him. Stiles says, "Come on, come on," moves back just far enough that he can step out of his jeans and tug off his own shirt, then reaches for Derek's, and they move, barely coordinated, the few feet over to Derek's bed and fall into it.

Stiles's hands are hot, now; everywhere he touches Derek is hot, long fingers dancing across his shoulders and smoothing down his arms. "All that chopping wood is really working for you, I have to tell you," Stiles says, and Derek gusts out a laugh, has to reach up to cradle Stiles's jaw, shift close so that he can lick into Stiles's mouth, tasting him. When he slides a hand down Stiles's back and underneath his waistband, Stiles groans and bucks against him, and Derek can feel how hard he is against Derek's thigh, can feel the damp, sticky spot on the front of his shorts. The buzzing energy is back, stronger, vibrating in the spaces between Derek's bones, and he should have known all along that it was Stiles, getting under his skin. "Derek," he's saying, "Derek, Derek," and Derek pulls them flush so that Stiles has something to rock against, so that Derek can feel all of him, desperate and intent, sharp and soft and coming apart.

Derek holds him through it, Stiles panting against him, until his fingers start to wander again, greedy, clumsy, shoving Derek's running shorts down his hips, brushing against him where he's already slick. Derek shuts his eyes and bucks up into Stiles's fist, smelling the salt and sweat of them, listening to Stiles's heart thump steady and true. Stiles’s mouth is wet on Derek’s jaw, and he bites down again, hard enough to sting, and Derek shudders, gives himself over, spills into the small, intimate space between them.

* * *

When Derek wakes up, Stiles is still there, and the world hasn't ended.

"Will you take a break from being a hermit and come visit me when I'm at school?"

"Maybe," Derek mumbles, rubbing his cheek against Stiles's throat.

"Come on! I promise I will totally, totally make it worth your while." Derek knows he's smirking without even having to look at him.

"Hey, you're on Instagram? You know what Instagram is? My worldview is shattered."

"I'm not, but Cora is," Derek says, and Stiles goes quiet for a few minutes while he scrolls through her feed. Then Derek hears the click of his camera phone, and he opens his eyes to see the screen—himself tucked up against Stiles and Stiles's smug grin. They look happy, but Derek didn't need a picture to tell him that.


End file.
